i once read an amazing review of one of my favorite albums, the wrens’ “meadowlands”. but, i was saddened to recently find i could no longer access its web page! fortunately, from somewhere deep within my labyrinthine lists of clipped inspirational text, i pulled this excerpt, which captures not only the brilliance of the review, but of the wrens as well:

“Punk rock hits 35 and the gray hairs start showing. Meadowlands is a suburban mess of a record, full of college’s lost opportunities, shitty jobs, and changed friends. Harmonies pile up like bills, and guitars cough like pipes. Why is it still punk rock? I’ve walked away from more than you can imagine / and I sleep just fine. – That’s why.” — Andrew

Andrew, whoever you are, you – and The Wrens – nailed it.

“‘The hour of noon has passed,’ said Judge Fang. ‘Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.‘…The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel was what they called it when they were speaking Chinese. Venerable because of his goatee, white as the dogwood blossom, a badge of unimpeachable credibility in Confucian eyes… He had once reduced Chang to a state of catalepsis by describing an avenue in Brooklyn that was lined with fried chicken establishments for miles, all of them ripoffs of Kentucky Fried Chicken.” - from Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”